Staffordshire PCC defends £1.4m office cost

Matthew Ellis took £1.46m out of Staffordshire Police's £169.3m budget for 2018/19 to run his office, the sixth highest proportion (0.86 per cent) of any PCC in England and double that of his counterpart in the West Midlands. The average in England is 0.65 per cent.

Sue Woodward, a Labour councillor and opposition leader on Staffordshire County Council, said: "Think of all the front desks that money could have kept open or the number of frontline police officers it could have put on the streets.

"At a time when policing is under huge pressure, when crime is rising and people are becoming more and more fearful of crime, resources should go first and foremost to the front line and not to the PCC's office."

However Mr Ellis has said it costs 'around £1m' to run a good PCC's office, with scrutiny due on any amount over that. He explained the £464,000 extra he spent was on commissioning services, such as healthcare and victim support, which would ordinarily have come out of the police budget if his office had not taken responsibility for them.

He told the Express & Star: "Trying to compare PCC budget proportions is like trying to compare apples and pears. It costs around £1m to run a PCCs office correctly whether that's for a force with a turnover of £75m or £500m.

"Obviously that figure can then increase depending on the work the PCC's office does. For example I know David Jamieson in the West Midlands who I get along very well with spends a vast amount more than me but he runs a lot of services out of his office.

"I have recently taken over responsibility for Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service as well as the police force but I have not taken any more money as there is no need to - £1m is enough."

Mr Ellis had been told to 'reconsider his position' by former PCC candidate George Adamson in the wake of front desk closures across the county. Mr Adamson had been irked by Mr Ellis's original refusal to comment on the closures, which he said he couldn't because it was an 'operational' one taken by Staffordshire Police Chief Constable Gareth Morgan.

However Mr Ellis has now said he agrees with the closures and wants to see more frontline police officers on the streets.

He added: "It was good to hear during a radio phone-in after the closures had been announced that the majority of people agreed with what we were trying to do.

"Front desks were a comfort blanket but the truth is their use has decreased dramatically."